put your ear to the ground

Typing with people about tsunamis, pharmaceutical companies and gov’t regulations on herbal preparations (badbadbad), and just why do we “hear” stuff…ringing in ears, buzzing, low-level babble (as if over radio waves), slams, creeks, pops, pings, people calling our names. Is it all just electro/chemical brain burps, or is there something else going on?

In this conversation, some of the women talked about experiencing tinnitus, migraines, heightened irritability, etc. just before there was some sort of storm, natural disaster, or before someone they knew died. Some have always been aware of these associations and others are now beginning to chronicle them, giving them more credence than convention and society normally allow.

The premise here is that animals are clued into what’s happening to the earth much more so than we. Animals hear/feel/sense what is happening around them, but we don’t. Animals are AWARE and we simply are not. It makes no sense that we are the only animals lacking the ability to tap into the natural world, so it seems our lack of awareness is more a matter of conditioning. We are conditioned from birth to ignore all things in nature. Our culture and history most of the world over has set us apart from the rest of creation. We are the chosen. We are the ones with god’s ear and we have been given dominion over the earth and all the creatures. In actuality, we have excluded ourselves so thoroughly from the rest of nature that we no longer understand her. As a species, we no longer have the ability that a worm does to interact meaningfully with our environment. We have become ridiculous in the eyes of Gaia.

But maybe it’s not as grim as it seems. The tsunami was a great wake-up call to many that there is something terribly wrong with how we interact with Mother Earth. The animals of the area made it to higher ground, so very few of them died. They felt the quake and the wave and knew to get their asses out of there. *We* have this ability, and we can (and should) reclaim it. The problem is, if we do that, we will have to reassess how we interact with the natural world. We will have to stand back and leave the trees where they grow. We will have to stop poisoning and raping the planet. We will have to stop blasting and drilling in our mountains and coastal shorelines (one possible contributing factor for the magnificent earthquake that resulted in the tsunami is the ongoing “sound bombing” by oil companies looking for off-shore deposits near Tasmania. http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=10211&fcategory_desc=Under%20Reported ). We will have to learn to be quiet and listen.

I’m not hopeful that people the world over will pay attention, but I am pleased to find so many women are pausing and listening to the rich stillness all around them.